If someone asked me what my favourite album was, depending on mood, I would say one of “Earth Vs The Wildhearts”, “Appetite for Destruction”, “Soul Destruction” by The Almighty, The Hold Steady’s first one, or maybe “August And Everything After” by Counting Crows.
I genuinely can’t remember the last time I listened to any of them.
A few years back I started going to a lot of gigs at a local folk club and got into a lot of new stuff. Reinvention is important, after all.
When I was there one night, surrounded by the blokes like me, the scruffy, beardy blokes who carry their clear plastic bags to put the vinyl they’ve just bought in (I don’t actually do that, but the rest applies), and who look like they couldn’t speak to a woman if their lives depended on it, (but then, like Counting Crows once said, “we all want something beautiful,” right?), someone mentioned King Charles to me. “Check him out,” he said, “he’s doing something different.” And “Gamble for A Rose” was.
But it wasn’t different like this.
“With the gun in my hand and my soul on site, I’ll bet my brains look good on white.”
He’s sung that on “Freak” before he’s even got to the chorus. (which to be clear, is “you teat me like a motherfucker, treat me like a freak”) and he’s done so in a falsetto, over a slinky, kind of electro shuffle. And before the end, the guitars screech.
And he sounds like Prince. This type of reinvention, it’s Prince-esque. It’s chameleon like. The blokes in the folk club, the ones that can name every single Fairport Convention album track, they are going to hate this. King Charles, though, he’s moved on. He has no more shits to give about what you think.
He is only just getting started. “Out Of My Mind” charts his journey back to health after a skiing accident, but its more than that. First he sounds horny as hell throughout the whole 35 minutes, but its not that either – although the record oozes sex – it’s more that this is the character he’s playing right now. Like Ziggy Stardust if you will.
The title track with its “you know sometimes I think I am selfish” line, nails it. This is selfish, this is self-indulgent, to a point, but its honest.
“Deeper Love” has the air of a stoned Jamiroquai, and its catchy as you like, but “Money Is God”, is….well what is it? It’s a dance song (the press release talks about “trap sounds” but I haven’t a clue what that means, I won’t lie) that laments consumerism, trippy and disorientating, this is the one that goes through the looking glass, and its not coming back.
“Melancholy Julia” is one of the most interesting. It has the trappings of dance music, but there’s a subtle guitar line that is Americana influenced, and “She’s A Freak” is the likes of which I haven’t heard since the twice in the 90s I went to a club because a girl from work was going – The Counting Crows album came in handy that night, for sure.
The lyrical content here is astonishingly detailed. “Drive All Night” is like a comedown, and the synths are sparse and odd, “New York Sunrise” is absolutely 80s disco. Think Pet Shop Boys and I am not kidding, written for the dreamers, and the vocal harmony floats here and the spoken word style, is almost like listening to someone’s diaries as an audiobook. That’s the vibe throughout.
“Watchman” sort of bridges the gap between folk and, whatever you want to classify this as, and oddly perhaps, “Feel These Heavy Times”, the last one, is a near return to the last record. He always said he was “glam folk” anyway, and this is more like that, really well done it is too.
In truth, some of this works better than others. When its good, its challenging, compelling and very, very good indeed.
What you can’t ignore though is that it is for King Charles himself. He’ll have alienated the folkies, and in many ways its starting all over again. So in that respect, it really doesn’t matter what anyone thinks, because on “Out Of My Mind”, he’s freeing himself to do – and be – whatever he wants in the future.
Interesting, on so many levels.
Rating 7/10
